Subject: Re: [vserver] Roadmap and Future ...
From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:00:24 +0100

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 09:17:15AM +0100, ADNET Ghislain wrote:
> 
> > - very hard to pick up from scratch

> On my part i quite agree on this. There is not real explanation
> of what tools are necessary, how to use them and what they do.
> Util-verserver has tons of useful tools but they are not described
> anywhere. Also you seems to allways say that the debian version is
> broken. This lead me to sa simple thing. Would it be not a good
> investment to work with the debian package leader and help him FIX
> things so we can just trim the constant flood of issue comming from
> this one :)

the problem is the debian policy here, we have recent
and working packages in/for debian, but the debian
policy requires them to stick to the old and broken
ones, as long as the brokeness is not a major security
issue (and we do not have many of those :)

> I think that to ease the entry point you have to:

> - work with package maintainers of the main distrib 
> (debian/gentoo/centos to have .deb/source and rpm version) to be sure
> their kernel and utils package is of quality. I know this can be hard
> as no distrib use the same kernel version but this should be done i
> think...

we always work with package maintainers and they have
all support we can give them ... 

we cannot do testing for them and we do not want to
do bug tracking for them, nevertheless we constantly
help in tracking down issues on their packages

> - List the tools and explain what they do (i created 
> http://linux-vserver.org/util-vserver:Cheatsheet because it was hard
> to find info apart on IRC). the great flower pages is complete but
> lacks of exemple case and do not say a word about the tools (like
> vmount etc..) it is just a reference page for the config directory.
> For exemple what do the service '/etc/init.d/util-vserver' ? 
> what is a vshelper ? i really don't know myself.

yes, we have that information scattered all over the
wiki and I think I have to bite the bullet here and
write something like a reference and step-by-step
walkthrough ...

> IRC channel is not seen by 80% of the people and this is where you
> find all the stuff ! but at the price of taking precious development
> time from you and Daniel :)

yes and no, one of the advantages of IRC is that you
can do it while working on something else (at least
I have no problem answering questions on IRC while
coding on something different)
further, the interaction on IRC is something which
I wouldn't want to miss, as it is a really good source
of information regarding problems, configurations and
feature requests in general

> If the distrib packages works and the tools are described then 70% is
> done to have new users hooked, the ones that needs custom kernels and
> latest patches will come next but at least everyone can get it working
> in no time imho.

agreed

> Of course the website look is a little too 90's and it will make
> people go away, i also think that adding a column on the frontpage
> showing the date of the latest patch could help people see that the
> project is live as well as a changelog for the experimental release (
> beta could be a better name experimental it looks like it can blow up
> at your face but i use it and it is very stable :) ).

> Well i will try to get the most docs about the utils i can on the wiki, 
> time to help you as much as we all can in our area of expertise.

> For the support plan, AQUEOS allready helped the project with some
> money because we beleive this project is a real beenfit to the
> community and we would not be affraid of a 50?/month basic plan to
> help this project to continue to shine. We are a very small company
> but we all should do our part.

yep, thanks for your support!

best,
Herbert
> -- 
> Cordialement,
> Ghislain
> 
>